The lives of our fellow humans are unjustly ended in every conceivable situation, when one person is so prejudiced, and is so filled with hatred that he (or she, but, yeah, it’s almost always a man) finds a way to give himself permission to kill the object of his contempt.

The murdered person need not have done anything but existed as a fellow human being, but of a different color, or different religion, or different nationality, or different culture, or different language or different sexual identity, or different you name it . . . including different gender identity.

Different.

Often, different is all it takes to fuel the flame which ignites into the inferno of homicide.

The murderer need have no other motivation than his prejudice, which fuels his hatred, in which he possesses a skewed sense of superiority.

Isn’t that what these murderers possess? Isn’t it their skewed sense that they are somehow superior? Isn’t this how they acquire the self-permission to mind the business of those who are minding their own business?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Among those whose lives might be unjustly taken are transgender persons, whom prejudiced, hate-fueled, self-superior-minded individuals found to so offend them that the haters gave themselves permission to end their lives. To get them out of the way. Out of their sight.

Since 1999, groups all over the country and world have used this day to remember those whose lives were unjustly taken during the past year, and to reflect on the state of things for the sake of those who identify as transgender, in the various ways one might identify as trans.

Over the past twelve months, 309 trans persons worldwide were murdered simply for being trans. That’s to the best of our knowledge. In the USA, the number was 23 of our fellow citizens. I took this information from the TDOR website: https://tdor.info/. If the numbers are incorrect, it is because I made an error in counting.

It is good—yes, it is important—that we remember these trans persons, our fellow human beings. We pause to remember many things, those which make us sad and glad—9/11, the days wars ended, holy days, birthdays, death days, and the like. In our remembrance, we hallow those events, we honor those people and, when we recognize that change must still be accomplished, we hone our hopes for a better remembrance the next year.

We’re all together in this thing called life. We are one human family. Let us love one another. Let us respect the lives of one another, no matter their different.